Don't Look Back
by SolipsisticFury
Summary: A first kill and a first comfort. Where do you turn when there is no redemption to be found?


The sword sunk in deep; deeper than he thought it would, sliding between sinew and bone, intimate as an embrace. The action of it had been surprisingly easy. Once he had decided to do it, the doing was simple; just a movement really. One thrust and it was done.

He rather thought there would have been more blood. A splatter, a trickle, some evidence of violence staining the floor or his hands, but there was nothing to brand him a murderer, or mark his victim a corpse; just a surprised little moue to dead lips, as if his victim had been half-expecting a kiss.

_I am Aya. I am a murderer._

The laughter was unexpected, starting in the back of his throat and gurgling its way slowly up past his tongue and over his lips. It was a hysterical sort of noise, but it was steadily drowning all of the dark thoughts slithering around his brain like handfuls of snakes.

_Murderer. Murderer. Murderer._

He remembered someone telling him it would be simple. In and out. Infiltrate and kill.

Nothing to it.

Then he remembered someone else telling him that it was never so simple, while laying a hand on his arm that he had wanted to brush away. After all, he didn't deserve to be touched. Not now. Not ever again.

It was the static that eventually caught his wavering attention and brought a stop to the noise slipping past his teeth and tongue in a demented parody of a kiss.

They were asking after his status. They were asking if he was still alive. A high, clear voice pitched against his ear was inquiring after the kill.

He told them he was successful. He told them he was fine. He told himself that he had died with the corpse at his feet, and walked quietly out the door.

It is generally assumed that assassins strike in the dark. That they will slip between shadows and strike with the unerring ease that comes with playing at cloak and dagger. But today had been different. Today, they had walked into a building at dusk, the sky absurdly pink, cotton-candy colored and indecently pretty. And with this in-between-time sky as a backdrop, a first, uneasy slaughter passed by unnoticed.

His steps were heavy as he passed by his teammates, his eyes half-lidded and almost sleepy, in a feeble attempt to hide the dark uncertainty lingering there.

"Are you alright?" He didn't know who had asked.

"I'm fine." Snapped, cold words. A facade descending easily.

_Don't let them know. Don't let them care. Murderer._

_- - - _

The ride home was inelegant. There was just too much damn quiet. It lapped at them like anxious dogs and stilled their tongues into persistent silence. Aya could feel the questions they wanted to ask. They were waiting for him to break, for the night's events to weigh too heavily and force some reaction. But he couldn't... he wouldn't grant that. This was his sin. This was his burden. He had made himself death's whore for a reason, and would not seek redemption now.

Thankfully, the ride, while awkward, was short. The sound of opening doors and shuffling feet alerted Aya once again to his surroundings, and he forced rigid limbs into some semblance of motion.

Climbing the stairs. Searching for keys. Opening the door. Familiar motions, all of them. Devoid of thought.

Once inside his tiny apartment, with the hushed sounds of his teammates filtering through too-thin walls, Aya paused to divest himself of mission clothes; his coat falling aimlessly to the floor and lying somewhere in a messy heap next to a bed that saw little actual rest.

He had bourbon somewhere.

It wasn't a habit he indulged in often. Even in his more wayward youth, he seldom sought oblivion. But abyss was an appealing thought this night.

So he drinks straight from the bottle, clutching its sweaty neck and palming the glassy bottom to tip out the dregs. His tongue swirling around the opening, darting forward slightly and meandering over alcohol-sticky ridges. This was cheap stuff. Stuff that lasted. The burn lingering like slow hands scrubbing at his insides. Aya liked its impatient fury, its willingness to inflict pain in its haste. This was Kentucky's finest torture, deliberate death in a bottle.

Eventually, his eyes start to sink closed, forced down by too much drink and too much thought, the insidious whispers in the back of his head finally dulling to an indistinct murmur.

But his oblivion is short lived tonight, as a tentative knock at his door drags his eyelids open and wrings a growl from the back of his throat.

"It's open," he near barks.

A slight figure hesitates on his threshold, muttering an indistinct apology and something about tea.

It's the little one then. Omi. The child assassin who was never really a child, pressed now against the rough wood of Aya's door, hands twisting unconsciously, his lip being worried between small, white teeth.

_Go away. You can't be my salvation. _

But the words never make it past his lips. Even as they open to utter some reprimand, or some harsh command, a pair of soft fingers press firmly against his mouth to still any comment.

"Don't tell me to stop." Omi's voice is quiet, but firm. That same high, clear tenor from earlier in the evening.

"I can't lose myself in you."

A pause. "I know."

There was very little space between them now. Aya was sprawled gracelessly against the headboard with Omi a squirming mass against his chest, his small hands running in frantic circles under the hem of his black mission shirt.

Aya brought his own hands up to still Omi's explorations, stopping agitated fingers as they came to rest over his shuddering heart, and clasping them there, even as he leaned forward to capture Omi's mouth in a first, hesitant kiss.

The fragile contact had been unanticipated, and a tremor passed the length of Aya's body. He let his lips lay against Omi's, barely moving, just sampling the boy's heated breath as it mingled with his own.

He wondered somewhat vaguely if he tasted like bourbon.

But Omi's mouth was suddenly open under his, and their tongues were twining together. His lips were an insistent, but welcome pressure, and there was a chill to the tongue suddenly caressing the inside of his mouth, as if perhaps Omi had been eating ice cream before making his way up to Aya's apartment.

Dimly, he thought there might even be a lingering taste of chocolate.

Omi pulled back from the kiss and leaned forward to sweep other, fluttering kisses over Aya's cheeks, against his eyelids, and down the firm line of his jaw, scattering the fleeting contact anywhere his lips could find pale, unclothed skin. Omi's hands had worked their way back beneath Aya's shirt, and began to tug upwards on the offending fabric with a surprising impatience.

Finally, Aya pulled the shirt over his head, and reached to relieve Omi of his own. The sudden feel of skin on skin was almost too much to bear. The slip-slide of such fleshy contact sent determined pangs of arousal rocketing through Aya's whip-cord frame, and wrung undignified moans from somewhere in the back of his throat.

The kiss that followed was hungry. Desperate. All teeth and tongue and swollen lips.

Their haste eventually led to an ungainly tangle of limbs as both Aya and Omi tried to shuck their pants simultaneously, finally leaving Omi left stretched beneath Aya, the taller man's curled fists on either side of Omi's head, and his unflinching gaze fixed on Omi's slightly bemused face.

"Have you done this before?"

"No." Omi seemed unembarrassed by this response. A far cry from the blushing young man he was supposed to be.

"I don't know if I can be gentle."

"I don't care."

And as if to prove his words, Omi wound his arms about Aya's neck and _pulled_, insinuating their bodies together, and driving away any chance for second thoughts.

The sex itself was hazy. There were hands and mouths everywhere, and a cacophony of feelings almost too indistinct to identify.

Aya lost pieces of himself in the act.

At one moment, he was thrusting ungently into the lithe body beneath him, at another, he was running a long-fingered hand through blonde hair, stopping here and there to coax damp flaxen tangles away from a sweaty forehead. It was too much and not enough all at once.

_I shouldn't be doing this._

The thought was distant; lost to the lassitude that had crept beneath his skin and infused his bones with a sense of lazy satiation. The warm, willowy form pressed against the length of his very naked body was driving him to distraction.

_What have you done to me?_

In the end, Aya was never certain how long they lay like that; skin to skin, their hushed breathing a rhythmic counterpoint to the silence neither wanted to break. But eventually, it was Omi who rose to collect discarded clothing, padding softly from the dark room, a strange, sad smile gracing the lips that Aya now knew to be soft and yielding.

_When did we become such empty spaces?_


End file.
